My Korean-American Life

  Hyo , Filial Piety: On Universal Ballet's Simcheong She walks to the edge of the ship. The sea below is dark and churning, rendered in the theater with the particular combination of light and fabric and sound design that ballet uses to make the impossible present: the waves, the danger, the depth. She is sixteen years old, or the dancer playing her is — young enough that the sacrifice reads as a sacrifice rather than a decision, which is perhaps the point. And she jumps. I was sitting in the Opera House at the Seoul Arts Center on the evening of May 3rd, watching Universal Ballet's fortieth anniversary production of Simcheong , and I was thinking about my father. · · · The story of Simcheong is one of the oldest in the Korean repertoire — its origins lost in the oral tradition, its earliest written traces appearing in the eighteenth century, though scholars believe the tale is older. It has been told in every available form: as pansori, the single-narrator musical storytelli...

  In two days, my husband and I will celebrate thirty years of marriage. Thirty years doesn't feel like a number; it feels like fabric—layered, varied, some of it worn thin, but all of it continuous. To mark the time, I decided to make us matching vests, sewn from scraps of mosi, Korean ramie, I had collected over the years. It seemed the right thing to do with my hands while I was thinking about time. Mosi is an ancient, delicate textile, traditionally woven from the fibers of the Boehmeria nivea plant through a painstakingly laborious process. It is the fabric of Korean ceremony and grief, reflecting the full range of a life. Patchwork, to me, is an optimistic art form, one that begins from the assumption that even damaged cloth contains good cloth. As I arranged the pieces, I cut away sections that were frayed or worn thin, like the years of illness or misunderstanding that I would rather remove. The remaining good cloth, combined with other good cloth, can make something whole...

FBAR, FATCA, Korean Joint Account & Tax Implications Case Study: Dr. James Lee — Medical Trainee (J-1), 2021–2026 Introduction In our previous guide, we followed Dr. James Lee, a Korean medical doctor who arrived in the United States on July 1, 2021, on a J-1 visa for a five-year training program. We examined how his U.S. tax status transitions from Nonresident Alien (NRA) to Resident Alien (RA) mid-stay, and the very different tax rules that apply at each stage. This guide adds a critical real-world complication: Dr. Lee and his wife, Mrs. Min-Ji Lee, hold a joint bank account at a Korean bank. Mrs. Lee remains in Korea throughout Dr. Lee’s U.S. assignment, working there and using the account for the family’s everyday finances. The joint account periodically holds more than $10,000 (USD equivalent) during the year. This single fact — a joint foreign bank account exceeding $10,000 — activates two of the most consequential and penalty-heavy compliance regimes in U.S. tax law: the Fo...